Had a chat with a soil scientist last week that changed how I fertilize

Ran into a soil scientist from the county extension office at a job site in Maplewood. He looked at my fertilizer spread and said 'youre putting down way too much nitrogen for that species.' I argued back for a minute but he pulled up a soil test from three blocks away that showed phosphorus was the real issue. Now Im thinking about getting soil samples before every big job instead of just guessing. Anyone else ever have a specialist call them out on their mix?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew_patel5722d ago

I read this article last year from the University of Minnesota that said like 70% of lawn care guys are just throwing down nitrogen without ever checking phosphorus levels. Your story makes total sense because that article had a graph showing how phosphorus gets locked up in the soil over time especially in clay heavy areas like we got around here. The soil scientist guy probably saved you a bunch of money on nitrogen you didn't need plus kept you from burning those roots out. I started taking samples every spring after my buddy let me borrow his soil probe and its wild how different my mix turned out. Now I just tweak the P and K numbers based on what comes back instead of guessing with a standard blend.

mary_patel5922d ago

Oh man, same thing happened to me last year when I finally got a soil test done. Turned out I had more phosphorus than I needed and was just wasting money on that 10-10-10 stuff every spring.

graceprice21d ago

Honestly, I gotta push back on this a little. I've been using the same 10-10-10 mix for maybe eight years now on all my jobs around St. Paul and never had a complaint about yellowing or stunted growth. Popped into the county extension office once and they tried to sell me on soil tests but I looked at the price and it was like 40 bucks per sample plus shipping and half my yards are clay and half are sandy loam so I'd need a dozen samples to cover my route. I get that phosphorus is important and all but most of my customers just want green grass that looks like a golf course and they don't care about the science behind it. Ngl, I think sometimes these specialists overcomplicate things for guys who are just trying to make a living spreading fertilizer without a chemistry degree.